


Forward Retrospection

by the_arc5



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-21
Updated: 2010-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:24:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_arc5/pseuds/the_arc5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not crazy, exactly. It's just hard to live with all of these tangible ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forward Retrospection

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously don't know how or why I wrote this. I'll just be in my corner.

It's been such a long time.

It's been so long since he came to terms with the aching loss in his head, the void that refuses to fill with time or acceptance or anything else; he hurts, and he knows he hurts, so he deals with the pain and continues living. He always knew that he would be left alone someday. He's seen more death than he truly deserves, really... Not just the anonymous deaths inevitably linked with endeavors like theirs, but intimate, painful deaths. Quiet lying to rests, violent cuttings off of life, slow, painful halts of metabolic processes. The howling black hole in his mind where such a warm, bright consciousness used to reside.

Nero is a fool fueled by mindless revenge. Vulcan is gone, and the pain is palpable in his gut, all of his training's protests overwhelmed by loss. As far as revenges go, this one is fairly apt. One planet for another. Life for a life, eye for an eye.

But it's been such a long time, and Nero couldn't have possibly planned for a revenge as exquisitely painful, as impossibly cruel, as this.

There are subtle differences, of course. The line of the jaw isn't quite right, the fall of the hair is changed, and the eyes are a brilliant, blinding blue, not the soft hazel-brown he was used to. But it's still him, _him_ , cocky and brash and thrumming with vitality. The same as when they first met, with the notable absence of that beaming smile.

He is, but he isn't. He ducks away from the meld, even though the skin under his fingers...cool, firm, so painfully familiar...calls for his touch from his memories.

Jim... _Jim_... Their minds touch, and he reins in enough control to show what he needs. Jim falls away with tears in his eyes, the emotions too intense to bear, even by proxy. He doesn't know...he can't know...that it's not just the empty space in the sky that stirs such potent emotions. No, the tears Jim bears for him (like he always has) are, in part at least, the reaction of holding that light close to him in mental embrace. Not a perfect fit, but close enough to brush the ever-raw edges of loss and remind him why he misses his Captain, his friend, so very, very much.

It's been such a long time.

*****

Jim would certainly have some colorful metaphors for this situation. Often, he allows Jim's voice to echo in his head, speaking the things he would never say himself. Someone needs to say them, if only mentally, and his memories of Jim serve the purpose. Psychologists, were he ever to consult one, would most likely classify this habit as unhealthy.

 _Don't give a shit_ , Jim opines in his head. _Psychology be damned._

His eyes trace the unfamiliar/familiar walls of the _Enterprise_. He's been placed in guest quarters, and despite the academic knowledge his lodgings are here for the duration of the journey, muscle memory continues to lead him places he ought not go. Places like a room that belongs to someone with his young face, a suite that the young not-quite-Jim has yet to make his own. He wonders (with no constructive purpose) if this other Jim will arrange his effects the same way. Will the same books rest on the same shelf? Does this Jim even have the same articles as his counterpart? Is the same boxy grey pullover tucked in the corner of the closet...no, no, it wouldn't be. Jim had taken it from his quarters once while he was away, some human longing to have something that carried his scent. He hadn't understood it at the time. Later, he did; it hadn't smelled of him anymore, but Jim, and he had slept with it pressed to his face until the scent faded away and it wasn't an imitation of what he couldn't hold any longer.

 _Bastards_ , the Jim-in-his-head says. _How dare they put you through this?_

"They do not know who I am," he replies calmly. Logically.

 _Starfleet doesn't_ , Jim retorts. _But some of this crew does. And you shouldn't have to deal with this._

"It's an honor to be escorted to New Vulcan on the _Enterprise_ ," he says.

 _Bullshit_ , Jim scoffs. For once, he agrees.

"I miss you," he says to the empty room. It's something he repeats often; there's no logical reason to deny the truth. But Jim never answers, not even in the faint memory-echoes in his head.

He closes his eyes, presses his face to the new/old standard issue mattress, and listens to the silence.

*****

He has, unknowingly, developed a penchant for masochism. It's the only explanation for accepting this invitation, moving chess pieces in patterns he remembers from hundreds of games that haven't happened, not here, not yet. Maybe not ever. The very thought appalls him, and he wonders if he should search out his counterpart and give him some helpful advice.

That way madness lies. He's close enough to being mad without playing God to a timeline so close to his, yet so far away. He'll settle instead for the razor slices of pleasure-pain waiting for him right here: the easy conversation, the flash of Jim's smile, the faint, familiar scent whispering over the table. If he were anything but Vulcan, he would sweep the chess set off the table, pull Jim into his arms, and hold on until they both crumbled to dust.

He holds onto his fragile control with a strength he didn't know he needed to have until now.

"Are you okay?" Jim/James/Kirk/Captain asks. His face wavers between the here and not-here, the is and the was and the what may be. His hands are shaking.

"Yes. I am merely fatigued. I must end our game early, I fear."

Early games used to mean something else. Jim would never let him beg off for tiredness, not without tagging along to his quarters. Sometimes, "fatigue" was a playful code word for sex. Sometimes, "fatigue" was the only admission of distress he would let himself make, and Jim always knew, always came to his side to hold or talk or simply sit and radiate a comforting presence. Sometimes, fatigue was really fatigue, and Jim would hold him, fingers tangled, a warm, soothing mental presence as he drifted to sleep. This Jim merely nods, concern lining his face, and lets him go.

And the fatigue may have been a lie, but as he walks the familiar/strange corridors, he feels so very, very tired.

*****

He's lost his mind once before, on the hot red sands of a planet years ago and quantum singularities away. It only happened once, the blinding white rage that robbed him of control, his body no longer his to command. He remembers struggling against it, fighting for Jim, always Jim...the haze drifting away to reveal the nightmare of Jim's limp, dead body beneath his hands...the impossible, crushing redemption of Jim's smile as he explained the trick. He had felt, that one time, the spiraling terror of knowing he had lost all reason. After that, though (before, during, always), Jim had been his anchor. Jim had caught him in that downward plunge, and held him so he never fell again. And the next time the white rage had crept into his brain, Jim's hands had twined with his, Jim's mind had held his, Jim's mouth descended and Jim's arms opened and Jim gave up body and mind and soul to the whirlwind, riding it, loving it, spinning the horror into something beautiful and wonderful and perfect.

There is no white rage anymore, just the gaping black. He will fall into it, for who will stop him now? The walls are grey and impassive, the bed broad in its emptiness, and while everything he knew, valued, _loved_ is just outside, he is stranded and alone. He crosses his legs, settles into the familiar meditation pose, and waits for reason to abandon him. Perhaps it will leave slowly, with his breath, and the final insanity will cusp with his death. Perhaps he will tumble into the madness too quickly to die, and he will beat himself to pieces on the uncaring grey walls. He has heard that his counterpart lost control on the bridge, became an animal driven by sheer strength and instinct for a few brief, dangerous seconds. Kill or be killed. In the end, that's how the whole universe worked, wasn't it? And he will paradoxically perform both actions, killing himself to survive.

 _T'hy'la_ , Jim whispers in his mind, his voice a whip of fire over his neurons, a rain against his heart. _Please, T'hy'la..._

 _Have you ever been ripped across time?_ he asks the ghost. _Do you know what it feels like, being here?_

 _Talking about feelings,_ Jim breathes, fire and water. _How very unlike you._

 _I am old and tired,_ he retorts as only he can. _And no one but you can hear me. Why should I practice control around you?_

 _Point taken_ , Jim concedes.

 _T'hy'la,_ his entire being groans, the gap in his mind widening, pulling what survives into the void.

 _No! You're stronger than this, you can do this, I love you, please, please..._ Jim screams, but ah, it is too late to obey...

*****

The arms around him are real. The weight resting on his chest, balanced on the border of comfort and discomfort, is real, too. He draws air into his lungs, and a familiar face lifts, peers into his eyes.

"You're awake," the voice in/out of his head says, sounding hoarse. "How do you feel?"

"Rarely," he answers, and the shock in the not-hazel eyes at the joke makes him remember where he is, but not how he got here. He tries to ease out from under the warmth, and a brush of hands stills him.

"You were screaming," Jim says. "We found you screaming, holding your head. Bones said that your brainwaves were all over the place. He had some technical terms for it, telepathic stuff, but he said your mind was trying to throw itself at something that wasn't there. You were trying to give your mind to a ghost."

An apt description. His eyes slide closed.

"You were screaming my name."

The air is heavy and still with that statement. His eyes open to meet those blue ones, color different, fire the same.

"Your ghost is quite dear to me," he says slowly, clumsily. Words always are, with him, with this, but Jim cocks his head and lets understanding wash over him.

"You loved him. Me. Us."

"No." The denial is vehement and harsh. "I did not love; I _do_ love."

"Ah." And the comfort of a tightening embrace covers the long-opened wounds. Not healing, precisely, but a lessening of pain. Jim's breath swirls over his chest as he lays his head back down. He finds the open palms and curls their fingers together. It's madness, but he will take what solace he can.

"I'm not...the same," Jim says, his voice small, tight, worried. "I'm not him."

"I know," he assuages with quiet, calm certainty. Oh, how he knows. But he's been caught up from the maelstrom once again, and he'll stay in this hallowed place of remembrance as long as he can.

"On Delta Vega, I felt what you felt," Jim continues, hands idly flexing in his grip. "Your emotions, they were controlled, but they were intense. Deeper, I think. More real. Terrifying."

"There was a reason my ancestors taught themselves to bring their emotions into check," he points out.

"Yeah," Jim agrees. "And you loved...um, love...him like that?"

"Yes."

They fall silent, the gentle motions of their hands the only break in the stillness. It's madness, and it won't last, but it's always been that way with them: each breath, each touch, each moment laced with gravitas, for that is how they _must_ live. Each breath, each touch, each moment is subject to the whims of the stars, to be saved or be damned in less than a second. It is madness.

But Jim...this Jim, _real_...slowly, shyly presses gentle lips to his collarbone, and whatever madness this is, it's worth it.


End file.
